I opened my mouth, and panted:
For I longed for thy commandments (Psa 119.131).
True religion (Jas 1.27 illustrates the positive use of the word “religion”) is first a matter of the heart, of longing and strong desire, with hunger and thirst serving as appropriate if inadequate metaphors, since the object of true religion is God, not the mere physical and temporal needs of the body.
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Mine eyes fail for thy salvation,
and for the word of thy righteousness (Psa 119.123).
“A watched pot never boils.” Of course this maxim is an exaggeration, but it speaks of an experience familiar to us all. We hate to wait for anything. We like microwaves, email, and instant oatmeal. Of course the watched pot eventually boils; it just seems like it happens faster when we pay it no mind. Standing there waiting seems to stretch the seconds into minutes and the minutes to nearly an hour.
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Mine eyes fail for thy word,
Saying, When wilt thou comfort me? (Psa 119.82)
Triumphalism, that unrealistic expectation of enjoying in this life nearly all of the blessings, whether physical or spiritual, of the age to come, threatens the well-being of sensitive Christians because it only deepens their dejection. That crucible of unfulfilled desires, whether holy or natural, instead of being accepted as the normal lot of God’s beloved people, is interpreted rather by triumphalists as a sure sign of exclusion from his favor, and this only increases the miseries suffered by the poor Christian.
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My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times (Psalm 119:20).
“Sacred greed” is the striking phrase C. H. Spurgeon used in a sermon on this verse (“Holy Longings,” MTP #1586), and we might call the same passion of our inspired text “sacred lust” with even better warrant (Gal 5.17). Lust simply means desire, but since it has such strong sexual connotations in modern English, I have chosen “sacred desire” as the best descriptive phrase for this verse. I would grab your attention without needlessly offending your sensibilities.
Our natural desires (those which are part of our human constitution, now fallen, and common to all people, converted and unconverted alike) are either amoral (such as for food, drink, rest, etc.) or immoral, as inordinately for things allowed or illicitly for things forbidden. Because our natural sinful desires lead us to immoral and hurtful acts in our unconverted state, some have fallen prey to thinking that desire itself is evil, and therefore that utopia comes by the total elimination of desire altogether. For example, it seems that Buddhism teaches that desire is the source of all suffering, and the Buddha is reputed to have said, “If you desire all happiness, abandon all desires.”1 This is evil counsel leading to death (Prov 14.12), as Spurgeon pointed out:
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